Lees: Like a Rolling Stone

FILE - This Saturday, July 5, 1969 file photo shows Mick Jagger, lead singer of The Rolling Stones, singing during a free, five-hour concert before nearly 250,000 fans in Hyde Park in London, England. Handwritten letters from Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger to his former lover Marsha Hunt will be auctioned in London next month. Hunt is an American-born singer who was the inspiration for the Stones' 1971 hit "Brown Sugar" and bore Jagger's first child. Sotheby's says the "passionate and articulate" letters sent in the summer of 1969 show a "poetic and self-aware" 25-year-old Jagger. The auction house said Saturday Nov. 10, 2012 that the collection, which includes song lyrics and a Rolling Stones playlist, is expected to fetch between 70,000 and 100,000 pounds ($111,300 and $159,000) and will go under the hammer on December 12. (AP Photo/Peter Kemp) B/W ONLY

Keith Richards and Mick Jagger wrote the above line for the Rolling Stones song “The Last Time.” Those of us who wish that we had at least two powerful rational political parties in the US are hoping that 2012 will be the last time the Republican Party runs so many candidates who are out of touch with reality.

Rachel Maddow ranted a pretty good list of strange beliefs that the GOP needs to reconsider if it is going to get in touch with the 21st century:

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“Ohio really did go to President Obama last night, he really did win. He really was born in Hawaii, and he really is, legitimately, president of the United States again. And The Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month. And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy. And the polls were not skewed to oversample Democrats. And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math.

And climate change is real. And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes. And evolution is a thing! And Benghazi was an attack on us, it was not a scandal by us. And nobody is taking away anyone’s guns. And taxes have not gone up. And the deficit is dropping, actually. And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. And the moon landing was real. And FEMA is not building concentration camps. And UN election observers are not taking over Texas. And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as communism.”

Well said, Rachel.

Robert J. Elisberg had a great piece at huffingtonpost.com. It was about who was most, shall we say, “hissed off,” about being on the losing side in the election. Elisberg figured that Ann Coulter (“Coultergeist”) must be really aggravated, because she is the one who said that the Republicans would lose if they nominated Mitt Romney instead of Chris Christie. Then the Republicans nominated Mitt Romney, not Chris Christie. Chris Christie praised President Obama’s handling of the damage from superstorm Sandy in New Jersey, and Mitt Romney lost.

Elisberg figures Mitch McConnell musn’t be very pleased after spending four years on his primary goal – making President Obama a one term President (as opposed to using his powerful position to help the American people). Things didn’t work out well for Mitchypoo.

He also figures the GOP Senators are teed off, because Elizabeth Warren never would have knocked off Scott Brown for the Massachusetts Senate spot Brown held, if they had approved Warren to be head of the Consumer Protection company.

Elisberg and everyone else knows that Donald Trump really has his shorts in a twist over last week’s election results. Who knew “the Donald” was such a kook? Karl Rove, the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson must be really ticked off after using all those hundreds of millions of dollars to make all those creepy ads that accomplished nothing.

Also on Elisberg’s list are Paul Ryan, Todd Akin, and Richard Mourdock. Ryan is damaged goods after losing. Akin and Mourdock maybe have learned to keep their mouths shut. Karen Hughes, who used to work for W, says that if any Republican guys open their mouths to say anything about rape except that it is terrible, she is going to personally rip their tongues out.

All the people who have been calling the President names for four years might learn to talk reasonably instead of irrationally, if they want their views to be considered by a large number of people.

One of my college history professors at Saint Joseph’s, Dr. Burton, once said that “… the world is changing and that those who don’t change with it become museum pieces.” A local basketball coach once told me that “…the world is changing and I don’t want to change with it.”

This is the dilemma the GOP faces. Do they recognize that America is now a diverse nation and they must change some of their out of touch with reality policies if they want to attract enough votes to win the Presidency? After all, the GOP has only won the popular vote once – 2004 – since 1988. Or would they like to become a museum piece like the Whig Party, which fell apart in the mid-1850’s as the Republican Party was just starting? James Carville said, on ABC Sunday, that he wishes the GOP would go away. I wouldn’t mind seeing a rational conservative alternative party in the USA, just as I wish the system wasn’t rigged so that the Green Party could be a powerful, rational progressive alternative party in the USA. If GOP doesn’t wake up, it will go away. The problem will be of the GOP’s own making.

Contact Tom Lees, a longtime area resident and educator, at tlees2@aol.com.